Abstract
Age estimations for 64 adult individuals from the Byzantine city of Rehovot-in-the-Negev were carried out using seven different aging methods. Correlation coefficients were calculated between five of the methods, which employed the following anatomical structures: teeth attrition rate, cranial sutures (closure stages), sternal end of ribs, symphysis pubis, and sacroiliac joints. Age estimations were checked against ‘summary age’ (Lovejoy et al., 1985a). Life tables were reconstructed based on summary ages and revised ages separately. It was found that ages obtained from the innominate bones correlated best with the summary age and showed less bias and inaccuracy, while ages obtained from the cranial sutures, showed the opposite. Reconstructing the ‘revised-age’ has no advantage over other aging methods when calculating demographic parameters.
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Nagar, Y., Hershkovitz, I. Interrelationship between various aging methods, and their relevance to palaeodemography. Hum. Evol. 19, 145–155 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02437500
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02437500